So did everybody have a good Easter? We hope so; but we hope you didn't have nearly as good an Easter as this guy did, because he was clearly smoking some primo fucking crack cocaine:

Today is Resurrection Day. Today is nearly over. It's taken me this long to come up with something to say about this day, the greatest day of the year. This is the day Christians celebrate something no other faith can claim: the resurrection of our Savior.

He spirals down from there, printing the lyrics — apparently all of them — from one of his favorite Christian rock songs. But we'd like to concentrate on the portion we've bolded above.

No other faith can claim a resurrection? Seriously, who's this guy's dealer, because we've been looking for the kind of invincible ego trip his smack provides. How completely and totally unaware of history, mythology and theology can you actually be, Mister retrophisch? Even completely aside from the fact that your Easter holiday is nothing more than a Christian adaptation of pagan festivals of spring, how entirely insulated must you be to claim that no other faith claims resurrection stories?

Hell, in some mythologies, resurrection seemed to be something of a cottage industry. The Persians had a tree whose seeds could provide resurrection; the Celts had a cauldron that did it. (And yes, that is the inspiration for Lloyd Alexander's excellent Black Cauldron, and the subsequent Disney film.) There are some cultures where their gods could actually be listed under "Resurrection" in the Yellow Pages, like in the Lotuko tribe of Africa and in ancient Egypt.

There are some gods who seem to make it a habit of dying and being resurrected, like Armenia's Aray and the ever-popular Baal. Others were killed on one or more occasions and subsequently resurrected: recall Osiris, who got a cock made of gold as a resurrection present, and the lesser known Shinto god of magic and medicine, Okuni-Nushi. Even some non-deified folks have made the Big Rebound, like Theseus' son Hippolytus or the Hottentot hero Heitsi-eibib, who died a number of times, and resurrected himself every time...leaving an empty cairn somewhere in Africa on each occasion. We promise not even to delve into the whole Mithra deal or the suspiciously Christ-like Apollonius of Tyana.

All of this means very little to us — a bunch of interesting stories with imaginative characters, sure, but just stories. But listening to a Christian spouting off as if Christianity has some kind of original and unique contribution to make to the world is just pitiful. Christianity is one of the least "original" or "unique" religions on the face of the Earth; it's nothing but a (very) poorly constructed patchwork of traditions and concepts from other mythologies. And yet Christian fundamentalists tend to be the ones trumpeting on and on about how wonderful and special their faith is. Fundies: grow up, read a book or two, and just stop it. It's getting on our nerves.

Christianity is one of the least "original" or "unique" religions on the face of the Earth; it's nothing but a (very) poorly constructed patchwork of traditions and concepts from other mythologies.

So it's like ... Windows?

And yet Christian fundamentalists tend to be the ones trumpeting on and on about how wonderful and special their faith is.

And these guys would be newly minted MCSEs.

It shouldn't be at all surprising that these dimwits think their religion is original. They're completely ignorant about damn near everything. Most of them are even ignorant about their own religion. I'd be amazed if you guys don't know more about Christianity and the Bible than 99% of the believers in your country.

Really, it's all just celebrating Zombies.

The dead rising, peoples brains being eaten (in a metaphorical sense...). Um.... giant rabbits.

My god res-erected

I'd be amazed if you guys don't know more about Christianity and the Bible than 99% of the believers in your country.

Perhaps my background is an exception - I'm a lapsed Episcoapl. No firm data but the majority of my sorta ex-coreligionists seemed pretty hip and aware of the history of the church and that bits and pieces were taken from this tradition or that.

You might get more of a sense of history with Anglican and Catholic traditions than otherwise. YMMV.

Yet another example of these assholes that are too busy smelling Jeebus' long dead farts to realize that, yes, their shit does stink too...

'You might get more of a sense of history with Anglican and Catholic traditions than otherwise.'

Thats bullshit. if any group is more ignorant of their own doctrines it's the catholics. I have never encountered a group of people who know less about the bible or their religion.

Maybe it's cuz I just iTuned Jimmy Eat World's Bleed American (name was subsequently Eponomyzed after 9/11) that I can't get too bent o'er some silly nutter's blissful ignorance. I'm just a little bummed they can vote, is all.

You corralled a nice assortment of resurrections, though. That was good reading. Thanks.

Now I can't decide which metaphor for Christianity I like better — the Microsoft one, or the zombie one. Maybe I'll mix both together and give that a try....

Regarding how much various Christians actually know about the origins of their own religions, I tend to think it comes down to the individual. After all, none of the religions are going to actively teach that their "sacred shit" is actually just a rip off of various mythologies. That would tend to put a damper on the sacredness of their shit.

As far as Catholics, again it's a mixed bag in my experience. As someone who was raised as a bad Catholic in the northeast US, I can say that my impression of most of the Catholics where I grew up was that they were more or less like me — they didn't really put much emphasis on their faith beyond going to church at the major holidays. That said, very few of them seemed to grasp the roots of Catholicism, but that could have stemmed more from ambivalence than from a belief that their religion was unique and special.

Basically, the more you are invested in your faith, the more important it is to you to paint your faith as unerring and original. So, the hardline nutjobs are far more likely to spout off shit like this than the lapsed Catholics (or other lapsed Christians in general).